How to Explain Sous Vide To Your Friends | The Tool Shed
How to Explain Sous Vide To Your Friends

If you’re already sold on sous vide and are already vacuum sealing and batch cooking like a pro, but your friends still view it as ‘fancy boil in the bag’, how can you win them over?
The most obvious way would be to invite them round to taste the results for themselves! However, failing that, here are a couple of ways to explain the wonders of sous vide cooking to the uninitiated.
The Basics
Sous vide can seem pretty complicated to those who don’t understand it, so what’s the simplest way to boil it down to the essentials for them?
We’d sum sous vide up along these lines: “When you cook stuff in a pan or grill, it usually comes out tougher on the outside than the inside, because the outside is exposed to much higher temperatures, but sous vide means that everything is cooked through evenly.”
Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than this, but that’s the crucial benefit that everybody wants, and it’s sure to pique your friends’ interests!
The Science
It’s probably best to leave the geekier side of sous vide out of it when you’re explaining it to somebody new.
Even if they’re a big foodie like yourself, the science-y stuff probably isn’t what’s going to grab their attention.
However, if anyone is interested in exactly how sous vide achieves such great results, the simplest way to explain it is that keeping the food at lower temperatures means that the proteins in the food won’t break down and shrink like they would at higher temperatures.
Safety
One of the biggest fears that people have about sous vide is that they’re worried that it’s unsafe.
The main worry they have is that the food is cooked at much lower temperatures than it usually is, which can usually encourage harmful bacteria.
This is an understandable worry, but so long as the food is cooked for the recommended length of time, it’ll cook long enough for it to pasteurize, killing off that harmful bacteria.
The other worry that we often find people have is the fact that the food is being cooked in plastic bags, which could contain harmful additives such as BPA.
However, they don’t need to fear, because all the vacuum pouches we sell here at Sous Vide Tools are 100% food-safe and free of any harmful additives; something which is always important to take note of.
It’s Easy!
Another myth about sous vide is that some think that it’s complicated or technically difficult, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sous vide cooking is actually really simple, so it’s a good idea to talk your friends through the process to illustrate this to them. Better yet, invite them round for their own private demonstration!
In addition, some think that sous vide can work out expensive on the grounds that they might still think of it as something you only see in fancy restaurants, but as it becomes more and more popular with home chefs, it’s also becoming much more affordable too.
The Health Benefits
More people than ever before are becoming more conscious about what they put into their bodies and the health impact of their diets.
If this is the case with your friends, it’s definitely worth mentioning the many health benefits that sous vide can bring to their diets.
Again, it’s best not to get too bogged down in the details, but essentially, as a result of all of the flavours and nutrients being locked in the bag (and the food!) there’s no need to add additional salts or fats later on, and all of the healthy vitamins and minerals don’t get lost to evaporation.
Hopefully, this will help to convert all your friends to sous vide aficionados, but If all else fails, serving them up a nice, succulent, sous-vide steak will probably do the trick!
Maybe a Sous Vide Tools gift voucher would help them make their mind up too!